Page 61 of Shadowlands Omega

“You’ll stay until morning, yes?”

“I already promised you I wouldn’t leave your side, didn’t I?”

“Did you make that promise?”

“Maybe.” She shifts a little closer to me. “So I’ll stay. If you’ll have me.”

“I want to have all of you.”

“You’ll be begging soon enough, Lord Yaron.”

I growl but it comes out as a puff of air. “I’ll beg now.”

“You can’t even keep your eyes open.”

“I would for you.”

“You’re lucky that I wouldn’t ask you to. I want you to heal. And I need to rest.” Her expression twists a little bit then, the shine of her humor dulling. “It wasn’t as easy as I hoped it would be controlling the heat in my hands. I don’t really understand the power. It seems to only work when I’m desperate, and when I saw Okayo with that barbaric wand he was going to use, I panicked. The flames came easily then. But as you got more relaxed and I did too, it flickered in and out. I…” She glances away. “I’m sorry. Okayo had to use his machine on some small sections of your back. I wasn’t able to keep it up. I would…”

“Shh. You’re learning, Kiandah. That you wanted to help me at all is more than I could have asked for.”

“You are Lord of the Shadowlands. I’m yours to command.”

“You know it doesn’t work like that. You set a different precedent. One I’m happy to obey and abide by.”

She snorts. “You are such a man.”

“Am I? I thought I was a Lord.”

“You’re a brute, using your whip to try to win my hand.”

I grin. “But it is working, is it not?”

“Let me go fetch Okayo to bring you more drugs. You’re clearly delusional.” She pretends to roll out of the bed only to have me easily pull her back. I laugh when she giggles wildly, and for a moment we simply laugh and are and exist.

She settles back on the pillows, looking down at me, letting me breathe in her smoky silhouette. I drag her very close until I can feel her breasts against my chest and her long, warm legs tangled with mine. She’s hot to the touch. An echo of the flame that lives inside. I press a lingering kiss to her forehead and smooth my hand over her very short hair around the curve of her head. She’s so perfect.

“You are right, though. I did have an ulterior motive in taking the lashes for you and your kin.”

“Did you now?” she says slowly. She still sounds so relaxed, but I can feel fresh tension thread her limbs.

“Yes. I need your family’s help.”

“With what?”

“Finding the undead.”

She freezes and I immediately curse Okayo and his horrible, wonderful drugs. They’ve loosened my tongue. I never meant to tell her any of this. The deal I brokered with Owenna was meant to stay between us. “You would use us for the very purpose you once condemned us for?”

I grunt rather than answer, sensing the moment sliding violently away from me like an avalanche.

I lock her legs to the bed with my own and dig my fingers into the curve of her waist, preventing her from leaving if she does not like what I’ve said or what I have further to say. “Yes.”

“You are unbelievable.”

“Thank you.”

“That was not a compliment, my Lord,” she sneers.

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